When patients understand the reason for taking medications, and the benefits and risks associated with medicines, they can make informed decisions about their treatment and will be more likely to follow the recommended treatment plan.
Having access to current information about medicines enables practitioners to engage in best practice prescribing of medications for patient care. Our practitioners also ensure they share decision-making with patients during consultations by discussing the likely benefits, harms and risks of antibiotics.
Patients must not use medicines, samples or medical consumables that have been prescribed for other patients and/or after their expiry date.
To assist patients to make informed decisions about their medicines or to understand any medication safety requirements, our practice team supports any verbal information with consumer medicines information (CMI) leaflets available from the NPS MedicineWise website www.nps.org.au/medical-info/medicine-finder.
To reduce the risk of errors when prescribing or referring, general practitioners ensure the patient’s medication list is up to date. Prior to prescribing or changing treatment, general practitioners clarify a patient’s current medicines list and known allergies. Single-use medications, including antibiotics, should be removed from patients’ records when they are no longer required and care is taken with sound-alike or look-alike medicines, particularly when using ‘drop-down’ boxes in electronic prescribing programs.
We encourage practitioners to review the medicines list with the patient to provide an opportunity to assess the patient’s compliance with a medication regime and to identify the need for any further education/support.
Where appropriate, general practitioners provide patients with a copy of their medicines list which is updated when their medicines are changed. It is useful to include all medicines (prescription and non-prescription medicines and complementary healthcare products, if known) on the medication list.
Our practitioners also ensure they share decision-making with patients during consultations by discussing the likely benefits, harms and risks of antibiotics. These patient-centred discussions focus on the following areas:
- Why antibiotics may not be appropriate
- Antibiotic resistance, and
- Advice of self-management of conditions.
Discussions with patients regarding antibiotic resistance are supplemented through the provision of leaflets and the display of posters in the waiting room.
General practitioners are mindful of patient use of complementary medicines and the potential for side effects and drug interactions with conventional medicines. For this reason, they also should be noted on letters of referral, including those for hospital admissions.
Our practice team helps patients to understand the medication purpose, options, benefits and risks, and where possible we use written material to support this.
Where patients cannot understand written language or where information is not available in the patient’s language, the use of pictorial media or translators may be appropriate. It is particularly important that patients understand the difference between generic drugs and trade name drugs so dosage problems are avoided.
All members of the medical and clinical team access and use the Therapeutic Guidelines and other references where appropriate. Our practice also encourages the use of the Home Medicines Review for eligible patients.
Consumer information about the practice prescribing policy is available to patients and displayed in the waiting room.
Notwithstanding the above, our practice is aware that it is illegal to supply medications:
- To Australian citizens not within the country at the time the prescription is written
- For use other than the designated purpose for which it was prescribed, and
- For anyone other than the person named on the prescription.